1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of this invention relate generally to geo-referencing industries and, more particularly, to special purpose machines, systems, methods and computer instructions for identifying infrastructure assets.
2. Description of the Related Art
Infrastructures may include transportation infrastructures (e.g., road systems, railway systems, etc.), energy infrastructures (e.g., electrical grids), communications infrastructures (e.g., telephone communication systems), natural resource transportation infrastructures (e.g., lake, rivers, aqua ducts, water pipelines, oil and gas pipelines, etc.), and so forth. Infrastructure assets may include elements of the various infrastructures, such as railways, railroad switching stations, power/telephone lines, power poles/towers, electrical switching stations, power generation facilities (e.g., power plants), telephone switching stations, pipelines, pumping stations, processing stations (e.g., processing plants), and the like. Information about the existence and location of various infrastructure assets can be useful to businesses and persons. For instance, the value of piece of real-estate may vary based on the existence of infrastructure assets nearby. In a residential area, for example, having a set of high-tension power lines, a railway, a pipeline or other infrastructure asset near a home may be undesirable and, thus, may decrease the value of the home. In a commercial area, however, having a railway, a pipeline or other infrastructure asset near a piece of real estate may be desirable for transporting goods and, thus, may increase the value of the piece of real estate.
Unfortunately, information about the existence and location of infrastructure assets is not generally available. One reason for the lack of availability of such information is the labor intensive nature of the processes for identifying and locating infrastructure assets. For example, a person may have to manually review records or physically visit locations to determine where infrastructure assets are located. Moreover, where infrastructure records are not accurate, the determined locations may be inaccurate.